


And Still After

by Leidolette



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Colonialism, F/M, Ghosts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22949248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: Silna did not fall in love with Harry Goodsir......when he was alive.
Relationships: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Lady Silence | Silna
Comments: 13
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not intended as a comment on real-life Inuit traditional religions or spirituality.

"Lady Silence?" the dead man said from behind Silna. 

She whirled around. Nothing had been there a moment ago, when she'd turned away from the endless southern horizon to adjust the straps of her sled. But when she jerked her head towards the voice, she saw him nonetheless, not ten paces away. 

"Lady Silence?" Harry Goodsir said again. Uncertainty filled his voice. 

Silna simply looked at him. Her eyes took him in much the way she had when she'd last seen him, stretched out naked and cold on the table - and why not, she was still in the presence of a dead man. 

"I'm... I'm not certain of what is happening." He was walking towards her. Silna took one slow deliberate step back. Goodsir stopped immediately; the stones did not shift under his weight, no clouds of breath formed in front of his face as he waited, watching. 

Silna was not scared of this phantom purporting to be Mr. Goodsir, just wary. 

Goodsir was not quite as she'd ever seen him in life. His beard was trimmed shorter, as was the hair on the top of his head. His face was fuller, and the lines of worry around his mouth didn't seem so deep. 

He was dressed in the blue clothes that all the men from the ships had worn. The cloth, though, was more brilliant than when she had known him, and he wore a stiff round hat with a little brim that was completely unfamiliar to her. His curly beard still crept down the edges of his jaw, but the edges had been shaved to a straight crispness. 

As always, he terribly under-dressed for the weather. This time, though, he didn't appear cold. No shivers wracked his frame, and his exposed ears were not reddening with the early stages of frostbite. 

Silna was glad. Real or not, she would not wish Goodsir to be cold. 

But she had paid the apparition too much attention already. It was nothing but self-cruelty to indulge too long in the false ghosts that the spirits sent forth now and again. Silna turned away from him, hearing nothing from behind her but the scrape of her sled along the rocks. When her will finally failed, many paces on, she turned around to look. 

Only solitude stared back.

* * *

It was only several days later that Silna saw him again. Silna was making for the sea at the south end of Qikiqtaq. It was likely that there was a safe path to the mainland there; and even possible that Silna could make it across before a storm struck or winter gripped too hard or she starved.

Silna was pondering these possibilities when her eyes caught that particular shade of navy blue again. The ghost of Goodsir was standing on a very slight rise off to her left, where she knew nothing had been moments ago. He was turned towards Silna, but not hailing her as before. He was just looking at her; his face held that soft, hesitant look that she'd seen on him often at the beginning of their acquaintance -- and once, sorrowfully, at the end.

Silna continued to walk her path. Goodsir continued to watch.

I didn't take long before Silna slowed, then sighed, then turned to face Goodsir. 

_Announce yourself,_ Silna said. The words did not come from her mouth, but from somewhere else. And they weren't composed of sound, exactly, but Goodsir's expression made it clear that he'd heard her.

She has never spoken this way before, but she is not entirely surprised; the spirit of her tongue is still with her, and he is in the realm where ghosts walk. Only memories, the both of them.

Though, Goodsir seemed quite solid for a mere memory. He took a few slow steps towards her, looking confused. "I am Mr. Goodsir. Harry Goodsir." He searched her face. "Do you recognize me? Is there another you were expecting?"

 _A demon. A false spirit. An animal in disguise._ Silna circled him slowly and looked over him from head to toe. She reached out to him with all her senses, physical and spiritual, as Goodsir stood there, fingers fidgeting. A shadow of a smile flickered over Silna's face. _But I'm starting to believe it's you._

"Oh, thank god." His voice and expression were shot through with relief. As Goodsir spoke more, Silna realized there was something different about his speech as well: his words were unaccented and free flowing. There were no more stutterings and pauses between his Inuktitut words, no more garbled sentences. But Goodsir wasn't speaking English either; his words were as clear to her as the air she breathed, and just as familiar. They were communicating in a language beyond the ones they knew.

It pleased her. She was hearing Goodsir as his friends and family heard him. And, if she wished, she could attempt to explain ideas that he would not have understood before.

Though Silna was now convinced that this apparition was indeed Goodsir and not some malevolent spirit, she still could not call him alive. As before, the outfit he wore could only have kept him tolerably warm in the height of summer; he didn't seem to feel the bite of the early-autumn cold. He was here in the land of the living, but his essential matter must all be of the realm of the dead. 

Silna half-wondered why it wasn't her father that came to her now. Why this man, for as much as she had come to like him? But her father was too experienced in the ways of spirits to be forced to linger in an in-between realm. Still, it would have eased her heart to see his face again. 

Goodsir wasn't such a bad consolation prize. Part of her was glad to see him once more, despite what his presence might mean for his ability to move on to the next world. He had been a friend to her, and she hadn't liked how they had parted. And then... there had been no time after. 

The image of Goodsir on the table, cut and carved, flashed through her mind again. She pushed it away. _What do you remember?_ , she asked him. 

"Of what?"

_Of when you died._

"Oh. Yes. I do remember it, after a fashion, though I'm not sure it amounts to much."�He paused. "I was in a camp, with Mr. Hickey. It was a horrible place. Then I was... dying, I believe, and dreaming. Dreaming for a long time. Everything was calm and bright and white. Then there was nothing at all."

 _Oh, Harry,_ she said without quite meaning to. The line between her own private thoughts and her speech had apparently blurred when communication bypassed the physical. 

"Then I saw you. It was as if my vantage point was from a location high and far away. But I could still see you walking with strength and serenity across the ice, and I thought... well, I suppose that I thought it would be nice to be near you again. And then, quite quickly, I was."

_Then gone again._

"Yes. Then gone again, back to the numb brightness that really was not so bad. Still, I am glad that whatever forces are at work here brought me to you once more."

Silna was glad as well, but sometimes words seemed as nothing in the scheme of things, so a soft squeeze of his forearm was how Silna could best express herself. It seemed enough for Goodsir. They shared a moment of quiet stillness, and Silna spent it enjoying the sweet presence of Goodsir, which had been gone from the world too long.

"You're alone?" Goodsir asked after a few moments, as if finally taking in the emptiness around her. "Are you traveling somewhere?"

She didn't answer. It was sometimes very painful to think on her life; what it was, and what it was now. Now was one of those times. It was something like shame that kept even her other tongue silent. In his ignorance, he couldn't know what it meant for a shaman to live alone, and she preferred it that way. 

Goodsir frowned, knowing there was a problem, but not exactly what. Instead, Silna took up the strap to her sled and asked: _Would you like to walk with me awhile?_

"I would love to." Goodsir fell into step beside her. It was long, lovely hours until he disappeared again.

* * *

A day later, Silna pulled her sled around a low-lying hill, and there Goodsir was on the other side, examining a small fossil embedded in a rock. Pleased, and not so surprised to see him, Silna waved him over without hesitation. 

After that, he stayed with the persistence of a flesh and blood man.

She'd never heard of this happening, but then, many things had happened the last few years that she never would have imagined before. These foreign men had strange ways, perhaps their ghosts were strange as well.

Again they walked for miles, falling into steady rhythm. That afternoon, Goodsir asked the question that must have been on his mind from the beginning.

"Have you encountered any others out on the ice?" he asked softly. His countenance was hesitant. "Any of the men from either ship? They may still be in camps, as you remember, or perhaps boats now?"

 _No._ She tried to be gentle, but she always felt so clumsy at it. _Not alive._

"Ah." He paused. "So, I'm the only... well, I suppose I can't call myself a survivor, can I?" Another pause. "Am I the only one who is still around?"

Here, she had news that would please Goodsir, though she couldn't say whether it truly pleased the man concerned. _Your leader, Crozier, is alive._

Goodsir let out a pleased half-laugh through his nose, and the corners of his eyes crinkled from his smile. "Oh, that's wonderful. I had hoped..." His hands came up to hover a bit in front of his middle, but he didn't reach for hers like she might have expected. She would have allowed it, if it had happened.

"I know you must have had much to do with that." His eyes held something in between admiration and pride. "Where is Captain Crozier now?"

_With my people. If he wants to leave, he can go next year. He has an injury, and it's the wrong season, now._

"Your people..." Goodsir scanned the horizon, as if he would see her friends' tents somewhere in the distance.

Silna figured she might as well tell him, despite the pain and humiliation. _Without the Tuunbaq, it is my lot to walk in solitude. I cannot be with others of my village._ She tried to explain it neutrally. She was glad she couldn't see her own face. 

"You are in exile, then, because of us?"

Silna nodded, because it was true. Then she added, _Because of many things,_ because that was true as well. 

"I wish we had never come," Goodsir said simply. "I have wished this many times -- countless times -- in the last two years, for my own sake, and the sake of the crew. Now I wish it for your sake, and your people's. I find that strikes deeper than all that came before."

Goodsir's steps were slowing down beside her, his eyes, too ashamed to meet hers, were fixed on some distant point on the horizon. 

_Come,_ Silna said, motioning him towards her. _Come. Let us walk now. Things are not how they should be, but we must go._ She didn't stop until Goodsir sped up to catch pace with her again. It's not that these things he mourned were unimportant -- indeed, they were horrors that would never leave her -- but memories could not stop Silna from moving her feet. This may very well be her last season on this earth, but she wanted it. She wanted Goodsir's company too, as long as she could have it.

But life was full of denials. When Goodsir had almost reached her side, Silna blinked, and in that split-second she was once again alone with the stones and the sky.

* * *

The next time Goodsir came for a visit, he had still not disappeared by the time the long dusk that preceded the very short night began, so she began to set up her tent. Goodsir offered to help, and she directed him in setting up the interior support structure and how to drape the skins over top to seal the inside from the elements. Because Goodsir seemed to be interested, Silna explained the crafting process as they worked; how they cured the skins for use, how to carve a bone needle, the way the gut must be treated to hold the whole structure together. 

Before she knew it, the tent was up. It really was much faster with two people. However, Goodsir hesitated when it was time to follow Silna through the entrance. 

"Such as I am, I am no longer affected by the cold. I'll just pass the night outside."

She shot him a look. Even if he could no longer die of exposure as a man would, surely he would want a change of scenery for at least a little while. _What's wrong?_ she asked. 

He opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. He seemed to choose his next words carefully. "Many of my people would consider a man and woman -- not bound by wedlock, that is -- sleeping in the same bed to be... improper."

Silna could understand that. However: _Do your people apply the same rules for a woman and a ghost?_

He huffed out a breath, not quite a laugh. "No, I suppose not."

He crawled in through the tent flap to join her, but still retained a certain shyness around her physical space. He busied himself setting up the furs that would serve as their bedroll. It didn't take long.

If it were winter, Silna might consider lighting a lamp, but there was still some muted light finding its way into the structure through the thin areas of the skins, and the luxury of lamp oil was not something she could afford, these days. She was just able to see the vague outline of Goodsir's face in the gloom.

Goodsir was settling in among the furs. He'd left almost all his clothes on. That wasn't the right way to sleep, but she figured he was making strides just by coming in and laying down next to her, so she left well enough alone. "Oh!" he said with some surprise. "It's quite warm in here. More so than on the ships, for some decks."

 _Yes, it was so cold there._ It had been the coldest winter she had ever passed in her life. 

Goodsir started to weep then, softly. Silna was alarmed, and started to reach for him (for all the good that would do), but he waved her off. "I'm all right, I'm all right, thank you. It's only -- we were all so cold for so long. All those men suffering -- and for what?" he said through his tears; calm, and infinitely sad. 

Silna could not say, and the only answer she offered was the regular rhythm of her breath and the press of her hand as she reached out again. 

Now that the dam had burst, it seemed that everything Goodsir had been keeping inside was ready to come out. "There's more to the circumstances of my death than I let on earlier. I think... I think you were right about us. About all of it. I can hardly remember the reason our ship was here now. I remember the explanation I gave you, but it's as if the words make no sense at all. Trade? The economy? It's all so far away now."

"Why did we even undertake this voyage?" Goodsir's voice was hollow. "It turned us all into monsters. Or, perhaps it simply revealed the monsters we already were inside, which is infinitely worse."

There was a pause. "And myself along with them, in the end. I wanted to stop Hickey, wanted to hurt all of them. Fellow human beings, and I poisoned them anyways. I'm only relieved that you weren't there at the camp then to witness my actions. Or after, when they'd had their way."

Silna was silent.

"Oh," he said. "Oh... you saw me?" he asked quietly. He must have read the truth in her eyes.

 _Yes,_ she said. It did not please her to say this. 

"Ah. Well." He paused in the dark. "I'm sorry that was something you had to see."

He apologized for too many things that weren't his fault. _It should not have happened to you._

"I knew it was going to happen." The words came out in a rush. Was this a secret he'd been carrying along inside him? "I poisoned myself and cut the veins in my wrists so they would butcher me. So, you see, there is no use in feeling sorry, because I knew what would happen." The light tone he tried for was as painful as a scrape. 

She reached over in the darkness and laid a hand on his forearm. She had never been especially adroit in her physical affection, but it was easy enough with Goodsir -- he seemed thankful for what little she could give. 

Goodsir gave a watery smile through his tears when he felt her stubborn touch. "Please excuse me, everything is just catching up to me at the moment. Again." Goodsir wiped at his eyes. "It really is a lovely home."

 _Thank you,_ she said, absurdly. Distant amusement was beginning to cut through her sadness as well.

"It seems that you are always comforting me," Goodsir said. The words were softer, but he didn't seem embarrassed about it. Silna liked that about him. Had always liked that about him.

They laid in silence then, for a while. She listened to his breathing even out, felt it under the hand on his chest. His still-open eyes glinted in the dark, and she could just barely make out a slight flush still on his cheeks leftover from the crying and the warmth.

 _My name is Silna,_ she said. There, it was done. Revealed. She'd been wanting to tell him for awhile now. _You can call me that, if you would like._

"Silna," Goodsir repeated. He took a breath. "Thank you."

He appreciated, then, the import of what she was sharing with him. Silna felt a pang of sadness -- she wished she had told him in life.

 _You're welcome, Harry._ Silna had never once called Goodsir by his name -- any name -- either. At first it had been out of anger and bitterness. Her father had been dead and cold and callously mishandled, and this curly-haired man had wanted to play at being soft, wanted to demand her attention while she was grieving. Then, after they had made that tentative progress towards communication, when she had finally forgiven him, the whole thing crashed and burned. Her tongue was gone and she was a failure. She would not be saying anyone's name ever again.

Except... now she had a second chance. _Harry,_ she said again. His gaze when their eyes met again was some wonderful mixture of happiness and relief. 

They were face to face in the darkness. 

In life, Goodsir had never really touched, or been touched by, Silna except in moments of extreme emotion. She remembered being supported by him as she staggered into their strange large tent, weak with blood-loss and failure; holding his shaking shoulder while he fought with something panicked inside him; and then their final mortal parting with just her hand on his chest.

This was different. There was no desperation, or despair. Just him lying next to her, smelling mostly of the wool in his clothing. Hair from an animal, he had explained to her once, though the material resembled no animal she had ever known. 

Silna shifted closer. Goodsir didn't move away. Their foreheads were so close as to be nearly touching. They breathed the same breath. 

His warmth, his smell, his touch -- these things came from his spirit, not his body. But for a shaman, one was as real as the other. Silna laid arm across his belly, firm and present. Feeling warm and near-content for the first time in a long time, Silna started to drift into a dreamless sleep. Just before she went under, Goodsir's hand lightly came to rest over hers.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, Silna awoke to find the tent empty. She blinked, not sure if Goodsir's ghost had returned to that in-between place. But when Silna stepped out into the cold morning air, she saw Goodsir a little ways away crouching next to a clump of plants with little flowers pushing up through the rocky ground. He had a book in one hand and a pencil in the other. Silna walked up close behind him to better look at what he was doing. 

Silna watched him work for a few minutes. With numerous little light and dark stokes, he was slowly reproducing the flower on the page. 

_Where did you get that?_ she asked. 

"Oh!" he said, waking from his artistic trance. "This?" He held up the leather bound book and the pencil. "I bought it in Brighton, about a month before the expedition."

Silna watched as he ran his hand over the smooth surface. "It stayed on the _Terror_ when we abandoned it. But, sometimes, now, when I put my hand in my pocket, there it is. Just as when we first set sail."

 _Will you show me?_ she asked.

A smile drifted across his lips, and Silna thought it a pleasant sight. "Please, pull up a seat."

Silna sat on her folded legs and took the journal from Goodsir. Silna half expected her hand to pass right through it, but it felt the same in her hand as any other book she'd seen while in the hold of the _Terror_ or _Erebus_. She opened it up and examined the pages. 

She saw sketches of many plants she knew. There were crabs and clams and snails. Beautiful pictures of birds in flight. Silna's eyes lingered on these early drawings -- they had a serenity about them. 

Further on, her mittens made an appearance in the journal, and so did her mukluks, disembodied of any hands or feet. Silna though that he had shown their construction and design rather well. Then, towards the end, there were several drawings of the Tuunbaq, though the proportions were all off; he'd never been able to truly examine it. 

There were no pictures of her or anyone else from her village. She was glad for that. 

Silna returned the book to Goodsir's hand and he reopened it to the page he had been working on. 

"What do you call this plant?" Goodsir asked, tracing the leaves gently with his fingertip. 

She told him. 

"Ah, could you repeat that? A trifle slower this time?"

She did, and watched as he wrote it beneath the sketch. It reminded her of the weeks they spent working together on an Inuktitut dictionary. It had been the only time she'd felt companionship that whole winter.

 _Can I try?_ she asked.

"Why, yes! Yes of course." Goodsir turned to a fresh page and handed over the pencil and book.

Silna had some experience using a pencil during her time stuck in the slop storage, but when she began to sketch she was disappointed by the difficulty in reproducing the images in her head into the page. It had been awhile.

Still, she tried. She drew the Tuunbaq. She drew it as she remembered it from a moment where the outcome of all this hadn't seemed so crushingly inevitable. Her pencil continued to move, and slowly the image of the Tuunbaq in repose took shape. It lay sleeping, not dead, the picture of health. Its human face was full and calm. 

Silna has only seen the Tuunbaq like this once. It had been after it had brought her the first seal, but before she had decided to attempt the binding ritual. When she'd emerged from her shelter that morning and seen the sleeping Tuunbaq, Silna had felt a new energy slip through her. She's decided then that she would try the ritual. She was still unsure and untrained, but she would try it; it was all she could do. 

Goodsir watched the lines of her drawing take shape on the paper. He seemed to stiffen when he recognized the Tuunbaq, but then he relaxed. "Was it your friend?" he asked. 

_No._ She continued to sketch.

"Your god?"

 _No._ Silna finished up the sketch. It wasn't polished, not by any means, but it was recognizably the Tuunbaq, uninjured and at peace. _My responsibility._

She told him what her people knew about the Tuunbaq, and more besides, things she had only guessed at. There could be little harm in it now -- his spirit was part of this land, and he could no longer upset its balance. 

For Goodsir's part, he no did not seemed scared or repulsed by the stories of the creature. Instead, he seemed fascinated by what she shared with him. It warmed Silna that Goodsir was intrigued by both the little arctic plant and the towering, carnivorous Tuunbaq.

 _Help me pack the tent?_ she asked. She knew he was even interested in that, the most mundane of her life's realities. 

"Yes. Yes, let's get to it. Let me see, how was the folding meant to go? Ah, yes -- it is clever, isn't it? To store the skins in this manner, so as to preserve them?" Goodsir continued rather absently in this vein, leaving the little plant behind and brushing off the back of his pants as he stood (though not a flake of snow clung to him).

Indeed he folded the tent correctly without too much trouble and they packed the sled with her few belongings. They fell into place together, side-by-side, with the sled scraping along behind them as they walked.

Goodsir stopped in the middle of relating his rather disastrous time spent leaning knots aboard the _Erebus_. Suddenly, he stopped and turned to her.

"Silna, I've only just realized -- I haven't the faintest clue where we're going."

_South._

He huffed out a laugh. "Then south it is!"

There was more to it, of course. The goal was to leave the island of Qikiqtaq and travel over ice to the mainland, where she hoped there was more game, and perhaps a protected area to overwinter. There was nothing for them here on the island -- for the living or the dead. But Goodsir didn't need all of that. He didn't seem to need any explanation, just her company and a direction for his feet to move.

On closer reflection, Silna thought that might be most of what she needed too.

* * *

And this was how the days passed on in that long and short season. They journeyed south -- across land, then ice, then land again -- though the weather changed faster than they could walk and the temperature slowly dropped.

Goodsir talked of his home and his childhood, but more than either he talked of the animals he had seen and studied. He described so many different creatures, and the smallest mussels were given no less attention than the largest mammals. 

The world was so startlingly vast, Silna thought, not for the first time. It was a lesson that had been taught to her on her father's knee, but she had relearned it many times.

Silna no longer found it so strange that there were two figures on the landscape, yet only enough supplies for one in the sled she pulled. Goodsir found the vast autumn landscape exceedingly beautiful, and Silna herself saw it again with new eyes as she pointed out plants and stones and distant birds for him to wonder at.

It crept up on her, the pleasantness of the situation. The peace of conversing with Goodsir outside the confines of a stinking ship; the freedom of the open sky without men slowly dying around them. After the murder of her father, after her banishment, Silna had accepted that happiness would never again be her companion. But something warm grew larger and larger inside her during the days she and Goodsir traveled south together. Perhaps it was the beginning of a new happiness -- she was afraid to look. 

Despite her fragile contentment, she was still an exile in a land that required a community to survive. One day during that long season of walking, Silna retrieved the last cut of meat from her pack.

The fatty bits of seal were wonderful, simultaneously chewy and melt-in-your-mouth. And she should appreciate it: her sled was becoming perilously light. Unless something changed, she would run out of food within the week. They'd barely found any game at all on the mainland.

Distantly, Silna wondered what might happen to her own spirit if she died out here on the ice in the coming weeks. Would she linger on the ice along with Goodsir? Would she pass through to the next realm where she hoped her father roamed? Would she just disappear? And, as the person she was now... which one did she want most?

* * *

It was the next day that Silna saw the stranger out on the ice. 

At first, she thought she was seeing another spirit. This was the wrong time of year for travel in this region, and no one but an outcast would travel alone. But still there it was; a human-shaped dot in the distance. It seemed to be to be getting closer.

Goodsir saw the figure too. He frowned "Silna, I think it best if I go ahead."

 _We will go together._ Cautious, but steady, Silna did not alter course, and let the figure come to them.

As the person approached, Silna realized in stages that it was one of her own people (though a stranger), a woman, perhaps fifteen or so years older than her.

By far the most startling detail, one that she only noticed when the woman was nearly there, was that the woman was a shaman too. It was written all over her clothes and her bearing. And yet, this strange shaman was seeking Silna out when the woman should have known that Silna was in exile.

"Hello, there," the woman said in Inuktitut when she was close enough. She sounded as if she didn't have a care in the world.

Silna made a motion of greeting with her hand. Then, experimentally, she tried: _Good morning._

The woman's eyebrows raised, and after a moment she said, "Your voice... I must say, that's the strangest 'good morning' I've ever heard. Though, perhaps 'heard' is not quite the right word."

So the stranger could understand her. 

With a look towards where Goodsir stood off to the side, anxious and watching them, the woman continued, "But you have encountered many strange things these years too, I see."

And she could and see Goodsir. She must truly be a shaman.

But the woman's tongue still lived in her skull. And yet she had all the other indicators of a fully realized spiritual guide. How could that be? What was she playing at, Silna wondered. 

"Unusual day for a walk. What brings you out here? Where's your family?"

Silna looked at her. The woman really should already know the situation; all the signs were there. She explained slowly: _I have failed in my duties as shaman. The land and the people are out of balance, hunger and death stalked among my people as a result. I am disgraced._

Halfway through, the woman had started nodding. "Yes, I thought it might be something like this. News of the Tuunbaq's death has spread. That's why I came looking."

_For me?_

"For whoever I found. You don't have to live alone like this. You don't have to _die_ like this. There are other ways to live."

 _You mean the ways of the foreigners?_ Silna said doubtfully. She knew there were more of them in the south, and elsewhere. 

The woman shrugged. "I have no desire to live among them. But if they produce something useful, I will use it. I have a good life."

_You welcome this change?_

"No. But the world is changing, despite what we may think of it."

Silna felt that there was some measure of truth in these words, and that was the worst part. She didn't want things to change. She wanted the death and destruction brought by the foreigners to be nothing more than a blip in the long history of her people. Yes, it was too late for her, but after her bones were long picked clean by the foxes, she wanted her village to live and continue on like it always had.

"Come with me," the woman said. "Live, and change too."

This strange woman who had the sight of a shaman, but not the ways -- was she the future? Could she be Silna's future?

Unbidden and unwelcome, tears began to blur her vision. All she had left of her old life was this quiet exile. Here she was a failed shaman, but at least she knew what that meant. If she followed this woman, what would she be? More of herself, gone. Traded in for the unknown. For ways that were not her ways.

"Silna." Goodsir said. Her name said aloud.

She turned towards Goodsir, and her face crumpled. Quick as a flash, he had her in his arms. He walked her away from the repellent, intriguing woman. For her part, the stranger seemed content to give them space.

It was Silna's turn to cry, her turn to be comforted. Goodsir's arms were around her shoulders with elbows bent and hands curling over her head. It was as if he was protecting her from rocks falling from the sky, but it was the relentless choices of life itself he was trying to shield her from. She cried and cried into the dark hollow of his arms, her forehead pressed against his chest.

 _Father,_ Silna half-thought, half-prayed, _What would you advise? What would you know?_ These weren't the plaintive words of a child to a parent, they were as a shaman to a shaman, but still full of love.

Too much knowledge had died with him. Silna was left with too little to be truly wise. 

This woman was something new. She was offering Silna a new way of life. But the untested was so often disaster. 

Eventually, her tears slowed, then ended. But still she didn't pull away, just pressed into the space made humid by her sobs and appreciated the rise and fall of Goodsir's chest, even if it was all for show.

Something in her doubted that Goodsir could come with her, if she chose to go. For all that she was a mess of a shaman, she still had her training and her instincts. Both were telling her that Goodsir was a spirit of the land now, and that he could not walk where this woman wanted Silna to walk.

Silna pulled back to see Goodsir's face. The shapes and lines of features were dearer to her than she could say. _Are you happy?_ she asked.

"I am. I do love it here. Everything is so beautiful, and I'm not cold or hungry anymore." He paused. "And there's you."

Silna knew there will not be a 'her' for long. Or, at least not a her that walked the physical plane. Unless she was lucky -- incredibly lucky -- she would not live out the winter. The arctic was not made for those hunting alone. She needed a community, and hers would not have her. 

Goodsir would watch her die. Slowly.

But if she died, she would die as herself. Die as her father died, and all her ancestors before her.

Which was better: to live as a new woman, or to die as she was with someone she loved?

 _I don't know,_ she said to the sky. But to Goodsir she said: _I love you, Harry._

"I love you too." And Silna knew it was true.

Their words were useless. This short exchange had not changed her situation one bit, or materially helped her make any sort of choice. Still, it was the only thing that mattered.

Silna turned and walked back to the woman to share her decision.


End file.
